


Get Good

by Ezlebe



Series: .tv/FirstOrder [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Twitch Streamer, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6510265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You should really get to know the other tenants, too,” Lando says, attempting to change the subject with a raised eyebrow full of implication. He still treats Ren like some unpopular teenager; his attitude no better than Han’s. “You and the guy next door have the same job, you know.”</p><p>Ren sneers, lowering his voice to something more mocking, “Do we?”</p><p>“Yeah, all that internet video game stuff,” Lando says, shrugging as he ignores the skepticism, and tipping his head for a better angle to glance over a few of the totes. “Wish I could’ve made money doing that in my day.”</p><p>(Prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6211960">Filthy Casual</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Good

**Author's Note:**

> Resistance is playing a game where they take a shot whenever anyone kills Lara in Rise of the Tomb Raider, which is surprisingly easy.

“Could you fucking pay attention? This goes in the bathroom,” Ren snaps, pulling the errant tote from the counter and shoving it back at Finn. It should not be this difficult to read a label.

Finn takes a deep breath, “The tote literally has _kitchen_ written on it.”

“The tape says bathroom right there,” Ren says, jabbing his finger at the carefully written, very obvious stripe of tape near the bottom.

“The _tape_?” Finn says, voice straining as he lifts the tote up high to stare at it. He sighs, letting it fall and audibly grumbling, “I cannot believe this.”

“Ignore him, Finn,” Rey says, dropping the pair of totes she has right in the middle of the living room, clearly ignoring the labels on purpose. “We’re not here to decorate.”

“It would take thirty seconds to put them where they go,” Ren says, turning and glaring at her as she shoves open the front door with a knee. The lock is broken, apparently from the last tenant, and Ren is probably going to have to fix it himself.

“Those thirty seconds add up to actual minutes we’ll be here longer,” Rey says, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms with a frown. “Would you like us to put your setup together, too?”

“I’ll kill you if you touch my tech,” Ren snaps, hands curling at his side from the mere thought. The pair would probably break it all from deliberate incompetence.

“I think I’ll just keep doing this, then,” Rey says, rolling her eyes and sharing a wry glance with Finn.

A short knock draws Ren’s attention from continuing the argument, and he nearly groans when Lando peeks his head in the ajar door with that usual, vaguely crooked grin. It's nearly an exact replica of the one his father likes to use when bragging about impossible deeds done.

“Hey kids, how’s it going?”

“Busy,” Ren says, shoulders hunching even as he grabs one of the totes Rey dropped. He might be able to avoid this if he acts accordingly, and turns on his heel to attempt to escape to – he glances down –  the office.

Predictably, Lando ignores the dismissal and walks further in, glancing around the mess of boxes with a few considerate nods. “I knew this’d be great for you, kid. Real roomy.”

“It is a lovely property,” Rey says, glancing sideways to Ren with narrowed eyes and a mocking smirk. “I hope nothing bad happens to it.”

“Other than the dead guy,” Finn adds, the words little more than a low murmur in Rey’s direction.

“Come on, now, that was months ago,” Lando says, voice suddenly booming with forced cheer, and he gestures wide as if to shove away the words. “It’s been nearly completely remodeled since then.”

“Alright, you, let's go,” Rey says, reaching between Ren and Lando to pull at Finn’s shirt, drawing him nearer the door and then shoving him out of it. She waves backward as she leaves, “It is great speaking to you, Lando, but we’ve still got some of his stuff in my car.”

“No problem, kid,” Lando says, turning to wave back at her with a smile. “Real nice thing you’re doing for your cousin.”

“Yup,” Rey agrees, slipping out the door and escaping into the hall.

Ren stares after her, envious and angry about it, then reluctantly turns back to Lando with a thread of irritation. “Nearly?”

“Can’t do everything,” Lando says, mouth tightening with some kind of frustration.

“Right,” Ren says, feeling only barely convinced. He wonders now if he’s going to find a bloodstain in the bedroom if he ever decides to change the carpet.

“You should really get to know the other tenants, kid,” Lando says, attempting to change the subject with a raised eyebrow full of implication. He still treats Ren like some unpopular teenager; his attitude no better than Han’s. “You and the guy next door have the same job, you know.”

Ren sneers, lowering his voice to something more mocking, “Do we?”

“Yeah, all that internet video game stuff,” Lando says, shrugging as he ignores the skepticism, and tipping his head for a better angle to glance over a few of the boxes. “Wish I could’ve made money doing that in my day.”

“Whatever,” Ren says, already deciding the neighbor is probably just some half-baked streamer who goes live in his free time, trying supplement the exorbitant mortgage for this place. Ren definitely wouldn’t have accepted the offer for the unit if he hadn’t gotten the murder/nephew discount.

“When Han told me you quit the engineering gig I was surprised, but look at you now,” Lando says, gesturing at all of Ren’s totes and boxes, the recently-delivered overpriced furniture, and out the window to the view across the city. “You’d be a real big shot if you didn’t wear the mask.”

“At least it isn’t a cover,” Ren says, picking up another box and taking it to the bedroom. He’s not even certain it belongs there, just that he wants Lando to get the message and leave.  

“Hey, now,” Lando calls, following Ren and leaning against the wall as he spreads his hands wide, as if to excuse himself from basic international law. “If we’d been in a different business, your parents might never even met.”

“Oh no. Terrible,” Ren says, attempting to force his voice more disinterested than bitter. He has heard the excuse nearly since he was capable of independent thought, though usually it was from his father and directed at his mother. “I’m going to finish unpacking now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lando says, rolling his eyes and gesturing upward, “If you ever need anything, I’ll probably be around.”

Ren pauses as he leans down to open the box, feeling his eyes go wide; he hadn’t known Lando actually _lived_ in the complex. He was tempted to try and back out of the deal, but half his stuff was moved in and he actually signed a real mortgage. A bank probably wouldn’t take ‘Yeah, my uncle owns the building, but I didn’t know he lives there, too.’ as a legitimate excuse to renege on a fifty-page deal.

“And talk to that neighbor,” Lando says, snapping his fingers and pointing at Ren with a wink like it’s goddamn 1975. He follows Ren back into the main living room, still talking rather than leaving, “I think you two’d really get along.”

Ren exhales slowly, shaking his head to try and clear the growing frustration. “I don’t get along with people.”

“Well, you gotta learn eventually,” Lando says, pausing and turning at the front door with short shrug. “Might be a few years late, but better now than never. And I’ll get to lord it over your dad.”

“Whatever,” Ren says, deliberately turning away from Lando and curling a few cables around his hand. He wants to ignore the tantalizing offer to exemplify his father's paternal failings, especially as it is largely a slight to himself, but the thought is appealing. “Maybe.”

Lando gives a grin, swinging the door open wide just as the elevator dings. “All I ask.”

“Hey, uh, excuse me,” Finn says, nodding with a tense smile to Lando as they pass each other at the door. He has a blanket-wrapped square cradled in his arms like a child, and stops awkwardly in front of Ren, “So.”

“Office,” Ren snaps, sneering sharply when Finn rolls his eyes. “Where else would it go, moron?”

“Stop being a bastard, Ren!” Rey yells from the hall, entering just moments later with another pair of boxes. Ren thinks they may have been the last in her car, which means Rey should soon feel fulfilled in whatever misguided favor she believes she’s doing for his mother and leave, taking her witless little colleague with her. 

“You’ve only got a few left, man,” Finn says, returning from the office with empty hands shoved in his pockets. “All you own is like clothes and electronics. It’s kind of sad.”

Ren turns, slowly narrowing his eyes, “Are you claiming to be any better?”

“You don’t even have a toaster,” Rey says, gesturing back with a thumb at the near completely bare kitchen. It only has big, shiny appliances, and none of them were supplied by Ren. “Or a blender. Or dishware.”

Ren grits his teeth, swallowing tightly before answering, “I _did_.”

“Oh,” Rey says, glancing to Finn just as her mouth begins to tremble, and then they both predictably burst into almost violent snickering. “I forgot.”

“Go,” Ren says, raising his hands as if to push her, before dropping them back to his sides to curl into fists. “I’ll be down in a few minutes. I want you to leave.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rey says, gently nudging Finn with her hip as he falls in at her side. They whisper something inaudible back and forth just as they disappear across the door jamb, doubtlessly about Ren from the low huffs of laughter.

The moment that Ren hears the soft ding of the elevator down the hall, he leans over and shoves his head in his hands, locking his jaw and screaming against his bound lips, the scratch of it digging sharp in the back of his throat. He is never going to live down _accidentally_ burning down his fucking kitchen, is he? He’s going to be eighty and hear Rey mocking him about it in the middle of a damned family dinner, or worse: Hux, who’ll probably Skype in from his self-declared throne on Mars or wherever just for the opportunity to needle Ren further into an angry old man.

He breathes for another few long moments, until the heat of his own frustration fades from his cheeks, and lets his hands drop to his sides. He only has a few more boxes, and then he can hook up one of the consoles and maybe Skype Hux. They sort of made plans to play Don’t Starve Together the next co-op stream, but right now he just wants play something distracting.

He’ll probably end up playing alone, anyway; he’s already second-guessing if he should call Hux at all. He doesn’t feel like getting either a busy message or being told his priority is below editing a video that won’t even be out for two weeks.

Or listening to more mocking from him about the incident, since the observant ass will definitely notice the boxes and blank walls behind the webcam. He still doesn't seem to care that at least half of it was his fault.

The elevator car is firmly at the bottom floor when Ren steps in front of the doors, and he hits the down button with a hard stab of his finger. In the same instant, a soft click of a door lock echoes from the same direction as his new apartment, but just a little closer, and he wills his shoulders not to tense up.

He hoped to avoid this forever, or at least a few weeks, but it seems he's actually going to be forced to meet the neighbor. He dreads some inexplicably perky nutcase who will attempt to stuff him with sociable cheer, but mostly just wants them unlikely to complain to Lando about the inevitable noise. Ren’s probably bigger than them, so he might just be able to intimidate them into silence from a single first impression.

Ren squares his shoulders and straightens his back as the footsteps near, and glances over as they fall in next to him. He stares, and stares, his blood practically freezing the moment he catches sight of red hair, high cheekbones, and a perpetually dissatisfied expression. Ren has a single, hysterical thought: he is definitely going to receive complaints.

Maybe... Maybe, Hux is just visiting a friend. He might know someone in the city and is only over from England for a few days. He’ll probably be gone tomorrow, back across an ocean and nowhere near Ren’s new apartment.

Ren huffs under his breath, unable to convince even himself of Hux visiting a _friend_. He’s fairly certain Hux’s only real friend is Phasma, who is similarly English. She is also definitely not in England, if Hux really is Ren’s neighbor… What the fuck is going on? People who have English accents aren’t supposed to just be walking around outside of England.

Well, Rey is, too, but she was brought over here; it’s doubtful Hux was also adopted by an overly sentimental, boarding school professor. It is almost more likely he was grown in a lab that was trying to create the perfect snob.

“Problem?” Hux says, head turning slightly so his eyes can catch Ren with a narrow glare. They’re green – Ren had thought they were blue, but apparently the webcam is a low-quality fraud. He’s also much taller than expected, though Ren had only ever really seen him sitting down, but he still looks about fifty pounds soaking wet.

The overlarge sweater makes it worse.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ren says, turning back to the door and watching the numbers too-slowly climb.

Hux’s grinding jaw is practically audible, “Didn’t you?”

“I was thinking about something else,” Ren says, carefully glancing back to him, catching that familiar, irritated sneer, and answers with a smirk twisting at his mouth. “Not everything is about _you_.”

Hux blinks at him, expression abruptly fading until his face is practically blank. He turns to the elevator doors, clearly dismissing Ren from further conversation.

It takes until the door softly slides open almost a minute later for Ren to remember that Hux has never seen his face. He only thinks some random guy he never met just called him stuck up.

And Ren sort of did that to begin with, because Hux _is_ , but they were also on Reddit; it’s excusable. Here, he just looks like an asshole, and Hux thinks he’s just a new neighbor who took one look at him, practically laughed, and _then_ called him stuck up.

He could just – Oh, the elevator – Ren shoves his hand in before the door closes, pushing it back open. He can’t be the guy who laughed, mocked, then also refused to get in an elevator with Hux.

Well, he could be, because that’s just how they work, but if Hux knew who Ren was he’d probably just be holding the door open himself and barking at Ren to get in. He wouldn't be glaring sideways at a railing with a sullen expression, and while irritating Hux out of his pompous mind is probably one of Ren’s preferred methods of wasting time, even he knows this is an entirely different sort of offended.

Ren has never even entertained the idea of actually meeting Hux face-to-face. Well, he had, but not in a way that had anything like actual interaction, and most of it would definitely be inappropriate for an elevator. He glances sideways again, eyes drawn to the pinched form of Hux’s lips.

They’re even pinker in person.

 _Fuck_. Ren could just tell Hux right now, explain the reaction, but it might already be too late – would Hux even react well? It’s got to be too much of a coincidence, to suddenly be in the same city, the same building, the same _floor_ …

No, Hux is almost textbook cynical, and would definitely come to the wrong conclusion that Ren has been secretly stalking him – Ren wears a mask, uses a fake name, but everything about Hux is probably online _somewhere_. He’d probably even refuse to play with Ren ever again, and fans would definitely notice they’d stopped streaming together.

_(‘Hey, Kylo, why aren’t you friends with the General anymore?’_

_‘Where’s the General? You usually play this with him… Did he finally figure out you suck?’_

_‘Dude, Hux said that you’re a **creep**.’)_

Ren hears the thump before he feels the dim throb of pain, realizing too late that he’s slammed the heel of his palm against the wall of the elevator. He stares at the brushed steel under his hand for a short moment before glancing to Hux, taking in his wide expression and slightly hunched shoulders with a growing feeling of chagrin.

The elevator quakes softly as it reaches the bottom, door opening to a narrow, blindingly white hall and a few tasteful pieces of modern art. Hux practically rushes out of the elevator, for as much as he would show it: walking stiffly with his hands curled up at his sides, shoving open the far door with an audible slam against the opposing wall.

Ren is, as a rule, not practiced in offering apologies, even less so to Hux, but right now… He kind of understands the appeal. It’s not difficult for Hux to hate people, but Ren might have unintentionally set some sort of record, and not even for the right reasons.

A familiar laugh echoes from down the alley when Ren opens the outer door, and he turns his head to find Rey throwing a pair of boxes out of Ren’s car with little care; Finn laughing at her side about something imperceptible from the distance.

Ren stares at them for a moment, something scratching dully at the back of his mind as he turns his head the other way to watch the disappearing figure of Hux crossing the street to the far side. Hux definitely knows who the Resistance is; he mocks them nearly every time they do anything that gets more than a million views… Dameron in particular, who is apparently a ‘certified twat’.

Ren has to get them out of here. _Now_.

“I said go,” Ren says, ripping the box from Finn’s arms and holding it tight to his own chest. “Didn’t you hear me?”

Finn stares at him for a moment before looking to Rey, deferring to her for some baffling reason. What a fucking beta male.

“Half your stuff is still out here?” Rey says, glancing the few boxes on the sidewalk and the couple more still in Ren’s car.

“And I can get it myself.”

“But…” Rey says, eyes going narrow as they flicker between Ren, the car, and Finn. “Okay.”

“Good,” Ren says, gesturing with his chin at the far end of the alley, where her car sits parked in a narrow lot. “Leave.”

Rey doesn’t move immediately, her eyes narrowing with an obvious, frustrating urge to satisfy curiosity. “Are you okay?”

“Go. Away,” Ren repeats, contemplating shoving at her bodily with the box. He could probably take the both of them should anyone take exception to the shove, even if Rey could be a little scrappy. They’ve participated in more than one drunken bout at a family dinner party, and he has the scars to prove it.

“Alright…” Rey says, backing up slowly and grabbing outward for Finn’s sleeve. She catches it between firm fingers, nearly jerking him with the stiff movement. “Let’s go, Finn.”

Finn glances quickly between them, “Seriously?”

“Do you want to be here?” Rey says, her voice low and tense. She glances unsubtly to Ren’s white-knuckled grip on the box.

Finn scrapes his teeth over his lip, “…No.”

Ren gets most of the rest of his boxes in with two trips, feeling little risk in hauling clothes in precarious stacks, and spends the next few hours afterward trying to calm down by putting back together his setup. The last place was nearly perfect, with a small window on the far end that wouldn’t distort the picture and conveniently waist-high sockets; playing in a cramped and dark space was also a boon for his perceived aesthetic

He hates it here just for being different, but knows the increase in space is beneficial, even if he has to use black-out curtains and stupid-looking stands for his power-strips. He manages to configure most of it the way he wants it, consoles and capture screen here, main monitor there, and even a convenient couple feet left on the edge of the new desk to put his laptop and pretend he’ll use it instead of the tower.

He even manages to get it all connected to the internet without resetting the router preferences, which is the real victory.

The dull trill of Skype that's comes almost immediately after he networks his computer actually startles him, and he fully expects it to be Rey demanding more explanation. He raises his eyebrows at the small three, and practically chokes at the fact _none_ of them are Rey; they’re all from General_Hux, including the incoming call.

Ren stares at the display with shortened breath, certain he’s been found out somehow. Did Hux see Rey even after Ren forced them away; did he ask questions; is he going to confront – ? No, Hux is much more into painful, slow attrition. He has a sadistic affection for turning antagonism right back around at the offender, or maybe that is just with Kylo, but Ren _is_ Kylo, so…

Ren glances hastily between the screen and his helmet, then exhales hard and grabs it, pressing answer as the steel settles over his chin. He won’t risk being exposed through baseless assumption.

“Well, General, this is certainly a surprise,” Kylo says, lifting his chin and thankful for the vocoder. He has zero confidence that his voice isn’t currently a mess.

“Ah, there you… Are,” Hux pauses, frowning hard and then obviously staring straight past Kylo’s head. “Where are you? It doesn’t look like your basement.”

“It wasn’t a basement,” Kylo says, beginning to feel more assured that Hux still has no idea that Kylo is the new guy in 29A. He’d be far colder than this usual mild derision. “I had to move.”

“…You were actually kicked out?” Hux says, eyebrows going up. He leans back in his chair, revealing a now familiar space that Kylo realizes is very similar to his current one, if in reverse. “I thought you were being dramatic.”

Kylo lifts his chin, scowling beneath the helmet, “Why would I be dramatic about that?”

Hux raises a distinctly mocking eyebrow, “I don’t know, Jigsaw. Why would you?”

“Jigsaw is a clown,” Kylo says, growling heavily enough for it to be audible through the speaker.

“Oh, Kylo,” Hux says, lifting a hand and propping the knuckles of it just against his chin. “I have some terrible news.”

“Why did you call?” Kylo says, biting his tongue as a familiar irritation pools at the back of his throat. He cannot let on to his anger so early in the conversation; it would do nothing more than encourage Hux. “I assume it wasn’t simply to mock me.”

“Boredom,” Hux says, a little too dismissively.

Kylo raises an unseen eyebrow; Hux called three – no, four times? For boredom. “Sure.” 

“I want to kill people,” Hux says, his expression turning to something glacial and uncomfortably alike to just a few hours earlier. “And Phasma is at work.”

Kylo clicks his tongue, certain that Hux is still lying, but unable to figure a motivation. “You called four times.”

“I called until it actually went through,” Hux corrects, a sneer folding across his mouth. “I was curious as to why your computer seemed to actually be off. I almost thought you went outside.”

“Whatever,” Kylo says, leaning forward and reaching to a power button, only to pause, looking back to the Skype window, “Which one?”

“PS4,” Hux says, his own hand disappearing from view for a few moments. “You haven’t touched anything but the computers, have you?”

“I have,” Kylo says, and, technically, he’s not even lying. His helmet was in the box with his figures.

Hux’s mouth pinches, clearly skeptical, “You’re a terrible liar.”

“You don’t know what I sound like,” Kylo says, grudgingly clicking accept on the invite he receives nearly the moment he turns the console on.

Kylo starts BlackOps before Hux can actually say anything against it, and is surprised at the lack of arrogant protests when he invites him and sticks them in the death match lobby. He might try to get Hux to play zombies later, gauge if he’s also forgotten the last time they tried that particular nightmare.

“A man moved into the murder house,” Hux says, only a few minutes into their first match. His voice is bizarrely bland, as if he’s speaking of a mild inconvenience rather than an ongoing complaint that he’s been expressing for over a year. “The authorities have apparently given up on finding the perpetrator.”

“So?” Kylo says, dropping off a ledge and stabbing a player below. It takes him a moment to realize that Hux is actually talking about Ren’s apartment, the two details casually overlaying to his current situation, and it nearly distracts him from the game. It hadn’t quite occurred until now that he was in the fabled murder house, which Ren had, prior to today, believed was an actual house. In _England_.

The match ends a few minutes later, and he looks to Hux in the cam, wondering how far he can ask before raising too much suspicion. Although, if he didn’t figure it out when it was obvious that Ren moved the same day as someone did to the apartment, then perhaps there’s no need to worry. “Do you know where it was? In the house.”

Hux huffs low, giving him a wry look through the cam, before glancing upward above his own webcam with a pointed gesture of his controller. “The office, just one thin wall from mine.”

“Ah,” Kylo says, voice low as he tries to glance subtly around the small room. He wonders if he is sitting right where it happened… He scowls a moment later, annoyed at himself for the naivety. Hux probably doesn’t even really know; it’s unlikely the investigators offered the information to the neighbor.

Unless, of course, Hux knew because he was the one who did it. He’s probably smart enough to get away with murder – hopefully, not twice.

“The police were very insistent I should have heard it,” Hux says, a short note of disgust appearing in his tone. He grabs a victim’s DMR just before Kylo can, then jumps off into the underwater cave, already being a prick just ten seconds into the match. “It was during that Gears marathon last spring, remember?”

“I don’t need your alibi, Hux,” Kylo says, tilting his head and risking his k/d by looking off the screen to stare directly at the webcam. “I don’t care if you did it.”

“If I had, I would certainly be regretting it now,” Hux says, peeking back quickly just before his character rushes in front of Kylo, punches the person to death that Kylo was already shooting, then darts away and up a wall.

Kylo feels a shout building up in his throat, the noise reverberating even inside the helmet. “What the _fuck_ , Hux?”

“You were slow,” Hux says, and he looks downright smug when Kylo glances to the side to see his face in the Skype window.

“Slow?!” Kylo repeats, about to kick off his team-killing routine a few games early. It would get him banned before he was ready to stop playing, but it would be worth it.

“I’d be regretting it because the new neighbor is a bastard, far more than the last one,” Hux says, continuing the line of thought as if he hadn’t just robbed Kylo of a spree. “I certainly hope he rented.”

Kylo nearly responds in the negative, a sneer curling at his mouth, but somehow manages to catch himself short. He exhales, desperately trying to think of any retort as the silence stretches, and finally lands on Hux’s almost absurd hate for small talk. “You actually spoke to them?”

“If you must know,” Hux says, voice suddenly taking on an unusually strained edge. “I hadn’t meant to, but it doesn’t matter. He is still a bastard. A very rude one.”

“How is he already a bastard? You talked _once_ ,” Kylo says, growing irritated even despite knowing exactly the reason. He just really doesn’t appreciate being called one so many times in succession, especially when it is technically behind his back. If Hux is going to do it, then he should do it to his damned face.

Hux is quiet for a long moment, “I’m quite sure it’s none of your business.”

“You called to fucking rant, and now you’re just going to – To _steal my kills_?” Kylo snaps, back straightening from the slouch in his chair as his hands curl around his controller, making it crack dangerously at the seams. He manages to catch a few shots at Hux’s back, but not quick enough to kill him, “Fucking fuck, _fuck you_. You soulless ginger _bitch_!”

“Get good,” Hux says, the words falling almost awkwardly from his posh mouth, making it all the more infuriating.

~

"So I have another cousin story," Rey says, approaching from off-camera with a few shot glasses and a large bottle of Grey Goose. She slowly starts to fill each of them, lining them up in perfect frame, “It isn’t crazy, but it is a fair amount weird.”

"Oh, from this weekend? Nice," Poe says, leaning over to grab a glass to set in front of Finn and then putting the last in front of himself.

"Yeah, Finn was there, too," Rey says, leaning into her palm and turning her attention to the display with a narrow stare. "We were helping Cousin move into his new place."

Finn laughs under his breath, eyes boring into the game with odd concentration as Lara slowly climbs an ice-capped mountain. "Poe couldn't help because he knows some guy in the building with a restraining order – "

"No, no, someone is going to take you seriously," Poe says, shaking his head and looking right at the camera while raising a pointing hand. "He's an old roommate. If he saw me with a moving box, he might actually have an aneurism. I don’t want to be responsible for that."

"And you don't really know my cousin," Rey says, voice lilting upward with acknowledgment.

Poe hums slowly, “Met him once."

"Did not got well," Finn says lowly, shaking his head.

"No," Poe agrees, furrowing his brow as he watches Lara fall off the edge of a cliff. “Oh, buddy…”

“Seriously?” Rey says, grimacing in sympathy as she watches Finn take his shot. She trades off the vodka for the controller, unpausing the game and taking her turn, “It’s only like the second QTE section.”

Finn crows when Rey falls in the same way he had, “Hah!”

“Back to the story, then,” Rey says, coughing lightly as she reluctantly downs the shot and hands the controller to Poe. "Everything is going fine, despite the rumors about the haunting, and our sort-of uncle shows up – "

Poe narrows his eyes, biting at his lip as he concentrates on the screen, "Sort-of uncle in the same way you two are sort-of cousins?" 

"Yeah.”

"You know, there's this fancy new word I've been hearing about:  _friend_ ," Poe says, followed by a mocking hum that abruptly cuts off with a wince as Lara again fails to reach the far cliff, arms flailing wildly in space. He sighs quietly, picking up his own shot and downing it, then handing the controller back off to Finn.

"I’ll address the vocabulary of teenage adoptions later, but for now, our  _uncle_  was helping," Rey says, leaning forward and then inhaling sharply in relief as Finn grabs the ledge at just the right time. She glances to the capture screen, then back to Finn playing before she continues, "He owns the building and the whole transaction was something of a favor for Cousin."

Poe raises an eyebrow, "He needed to sell that place really bad, didn't he?"

"Super bad, he kept mentioning how good it was," Finn says, brow still furrowed in concentration as Lara now traverses a ridiculous ledge. “Like, every ten seconds.”

"Even knowing Cousin destroyed his last kitchen over a _boss battle_ , and that he'll probably destroy this one over something equally dumb," Rey says, throwing her hands up in clear exasperation.

"Dark Souls," Finn says, glancing up to look right into the camera. He shakes his head, still staring, “Not even once.”

Rey nods with a sideways grimace, "Yeah, I think we told this story before, but he was trying to beat this guy, the one he's a little obsessed with, that is a total elitist and speed-ran it in like eight hours."

Poe grimaces, tutting under his breath, "I know a guy like that, too. Almost drove me to destroying a kitchen.”

"Worst," Finn says, nodding with a quick glance away from the screen.

"Worst," Poe agrees, “The dude is good, but _holy shit_ is he an asshole. Like, games are for fun? But he doesn't seem to realize it.”

Rey shrugs, gesturing cyclically and clearly trying to get back to the story. "So it's going okay for about an hour, we take boxes, go in the elevator, get yelled at for putting it in the wrong place, and then halfway through unloading his rubbish, he just bursts out of the building, all puffed up –"

"Like a Miyazaki character," Finn mutters, voice low and distracted as he steers Lara over a cliff's edge.

Rey blinks, pausing her tirade, "What?" 

"His hair," Finn says, waving the controller near the side of his own head.

"Uh, I was going to say cat, but I guess that works," Rey says, mouth twitching up into a sideways grin. "Anyway, and he's not having a tantrum? But he practically shoves at us to get out." 

Poe raises his eyebrows, "Did you leave?"

"Uh, yeah?” Rey says, leaning back into the couch with a resigned look. “I was only helping because his mum asked me."

"What did you do with his stuff?"

"Just left it in the alley," Finn says, shrugging slightly, a smirk curling up at the corner of his mouth. "I hope all his fancy clothes got stolen."

Rey huffs, laughing her agreement with a short bite of her lower lip. "There's probably a homeless person out there wearing a five-hundred-dollar jumper and looking no better for it."

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't figured out how to put it in, but Ren goes by Ren because of an administrative mistake as a kindergartener, and when his teacher called him that he decided, in a tiny, spoiled 5yo way, to force everyone else to do the same. @Sarufish helped craft the excuse, and I will be using it forever and in every possible modern AU. 
> 
> (There is another part to the series that is half-written, but it's so ridiculous I barely want to publish it. It involves unlikely ventures into the modeling industry.)
> 
> (Also, I was watching a lot of Investigative Discovery when writing this...)


End file.
